


The Nightmare Before Christmas

by AsagiStilinski



Series: Happy Birthday Derek Hale [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Sterek, Christmas, Derek taking care of Stiles, Fluff, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Mentions of Anxiety, Mentions of medication, Minor Angst, mentions of Stiles and Scott schism, post 5A
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5413205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsagiStilinski/pseuds/AsagiStilinski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They aren't THAT bad," Derek sighed</p><p>"Der, I just picked up a card that had Santa's bare butt on it,"</p><p>Derek cringed</p><p>Yeah that.. that wasn't good...</p><p>Or</p><p>Day four of 12 Days Of Sterek includes Christmas cards</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightmare Before Christmas

It was stupid when it started

Around a year ago he started making jewelry when he couldn't sleep

It was stupid

But he needed something to do with his hands and he couldn't concentrate on anything without getting a massive migrane out of it so anything like computer work or even drawing was completely out

He had tried to sew once for a few months and it ended ... badly...

Unless he wanted to go downstairs and cook in the wee hours of the morning there wasn't much he could do

And he couldn't cook when he wasn't sleeping, that was a house fire waiting to happen

So out of complete desperation he had dug a few of his broken keychains and peices of cheap jewelry out of his desk drawer and started tinkering with putting them back together

The necklaces were easy, it was the keychains that were the real pains but he got through them

The next day, on a wim, he bought a bunch of random stuff at a hobby store and hid it all under his bed

That night when he couldn't sleep he got it at all and just started screwing with it

He tried a combination of different things but what ultimately ended up providing the perfect hands on distraction were "pixie dust" necklaces

The process couldn't be easier

Get a bottle pendant, fill it with glitter, glue the cap on, hook a jump ring through it, hook jump rings through some cheap little charms, and string them all on a chain or a cord or anything even remotely resembling a necklace

He had given the first one to Scott, because they were trying to mend fences at the time and all that and it kind of reminded him of Scott anyway, red glitter, black cord, wolf charm, moon charm

It was basic in a childish way but when he trudged into school the next morning, completely zombified and working on an hour of restless "sleep", grumbling a "Here" and stuffing it into Scott's hand with a little more force than necessary, just because he was so badly coordinated then that he would have dropped it otherwise, Scott looked at him like Stiles had just given him a peice of the moon

It didn't strike him until hours later that it had been the first time they touched eachother since.... everything happened....

His hands had been tingling all day and he had tried his hardest to ignore it

After school, on their way to lacrosse practice, Scott power-walked next to Stiles and as soon as he was close enough slung his arms around him

Stiles had frozen as if someone had just splashed him with cold water

Because the thing is that even before the .... Theo fiasco.... Scott was never the hugger in their relationship

It was always, always Stiles

Stiles always initiated touch

Hand holding, hugging, licking inappropriately (he had mostly grown out of that one by highschool though... mostly...)

It was all Stiles and Scott was just content to be the object of his affection

Sure he initiated touch sometimes, to drain pain or to pull him out of the reach of a monster or... you know, touches of necessity...

He couldn't remember the last time Scott hugged him, and not the other way around

Scott had tightened his grip on Stiles a little more and Stiles had awkwardly grabbed at his arms and squeezed back, too tired and shocked to actually turn around and hug back the right way, but Scott seemed to understand

"Thank you," he had said

They stood like that in the hall until they heard Finstock- well, Scott heard Finstock- screeching around the corner about them being late, but it had felt like someone was having to peel Scott's arms off of Stiles before he finally let go and reached out with hesitation to pull Stiles to lacrosse

Stiles ended up falling in the middle of running laps and had such a hard time getting to his feet again that he had to sit out, and Scott offered to sit out with him- despite Finstock's almost violent protests-

It was during that hour that they really started healing

Not mending, not putting tape over the cracks and forcing smiles at eachother because they technically made up, but actually reconnecting, putting glue in all of the cracks and holding the peices together until they didn't need support anymore

Stiles didn't tell him why he made the necklace, and Scott wore it every day for two months- until it broke, predictably, when he was changing in the locker room

Stiles just made him a new one

Then Kira had kept commenting on how pretty they were so since Stiles was making them anyway- he probably had like... a hundred by now he figured- he gave one to her too

And then to Malia

And then Lydia wanted one...

And it had really sort of just spiraled from there

Everyone seemed to like the necklaces and Stiles liked making them, they kept him busy when he was a zombie, so there didn't seem to be a downside... at the time

But the thing is that the necklaces had become an obsession

Everyone liked them, and his father had helpfully suggested that they would make great Christmas gifts

Ofcourse Stiles took this to heart and had set to work weeks ago prepping them by getting some of the bottles filled and glued already, but now it was December and between work, chores, and the Give Derek Hale Good Things project he was running on a low time and little work and something HAD to be done

So naturally, he decided the answer was to stay up all night and try to make some progress

He hadn't expected to get better, emotionally, over the year

He hadn't expected to get to the point where he could actually sleep more nights than he couldn't

Or where he could close his eyes and see anything but blood

And it hadn't been an easy process

But a year is a long time and as the months went by ... there was help

The little things weren't so little anymore

And he honestly owed Derek more than he could ever explain

Derek probably didn't even know how much he did for Stiles by simply being there, by not pushing him to go to college like mostly everyone else was doing

By offering him a quiet place and by waking him up from the nightmares

By talking at five in the morning, voices barely above wispers, and neither of them completely awake as Shark Week went on in the background, talking about death and mercy and guilt

And that became an almost regular thing there wich was... really surprising honestly...

But it helped

Little by little it all helped

And even though he was ... better... with everyone now, he couldn't lie, the space between them was good for him

Less reminders, less constant... constant reminders...

He yawned for probably the billionth time in the last hour and swiped a hand over his face as he stared down at the work in front of him and tried to get the jump ring looped through the eyehook

It shouldn't be this hard

It shouldn't be requiring this much of his attention

But his hands were shaking and his eyes weren't focusing and he was... he was struggling... ofcourse he was...

Swallowing, he felt his hands shaking a little harder and finally threw down everything in frustration, rubbing his eyes

"You seem tired," he heard, looking up and frowning deeply at Derek

"Go away," he mumbled, too tired to ask questions or even try to be nice

"No, look at yourself Stiles, you're falling apart,"

"I've BEEN falling apart, where have you been?" he grumbled back

"Not like this... come on, please just go to bed, you can do this tommorow, I promise,"

"No.. no time.... gotta card shop..."

"That doesn't even make sense, Stiles, you have to sleep, we're going to visit Kira tommorrow, it's a two hour drive and you need your sleep,"

"NO!" Stiles finally shouted, pushing uselessly on the table and groaning as he rubbed at his eyes

"I can't.. I can't.... I wanna make .. up the.. pack ... it makes it safe..."

Derek frowned, taking a step forward, he was really going out of it if he was this incoherent

"Come on Stiles, please.. let's go to bed ok? I need to sleep, I'm tired, please,"

Something Derek had learned about Stiles from living with him for the last five months that he never realized before- Stiles never did anything to take care of himself... but he would do everything to take care of the people in his pack, especially Derek

"Because you're as self-destructive as I am and you don't have anyone else to save you from yourself," he had said once, when Derek actually was tired enough to ask about it

He knew it was cruel but ever since then he had been using it in his favor, when Stiles starts destroying himself Derek tells him that whatever he's doing is causing Derek harm, and usually he settles down- if not with great reluctance

It was cruel, but it was better than letting him crumble to peices

"No.. no... please I .. gotta safe... keep safe..." Stiles panted, as if talking were a physical strain at this point

With a sigh of frustration Derek took a step back, staring at the table and squinting slightly, there was something slightly.. off.. about the glitter..

He ran his fingers through it, sniffing it as much as he could when suddenly, as faint as fog, he picked up on the scent of herbs

He shrank back, the realization suddenly dawning on him that this wasn't just Stiles' perfectionism kicking in, it was...

Stiles was making protection necklaces

They weren't just pretty little decorations that he wanted to use as stocking stuffers, they were blended with herbs that Stiles had enchanted with some sort of protection spell...

If Derek picked up the cords and really inhaled, he could probably pick up the scent on them too

At this point he was wondering about the charms too, if Stiles had enchanted them somehow as well

No wonder he was so adamant about this....

"Stiles, do you want some hot chocolate? It'll wake you up,"

This seemed to grab his attention and he gave a quick, sharp nod of affirmation

"Ok, come to the couch alright?" he said softly

Another nod and he went pliant as Derek picked him up, carrying him to the couch with ease for once and draping a blanket over him

Predictably he tiredly tried to kick the blanket off, but Derek was a master at blanket cocoons- even loose ones- and he gave up after a few tries

Derek only made one mug of hot chocolate, if he was right he wouldn't need two of them

And sure enough wen he came back Stiles was dead asleep on the couch

He was tempted to go ahead and take him to his room but he knew if he touched him right now it would just wake him up, the best thing to do would be to wait about thirty minutes for him to fall into a deeper sleep and THEN take him to bed

So in the mean time he walked over to the dining room table, setting down the- his- mug of hot chocolate, and looking over the necklaces Stiles was making

He had managed to make three of them completely and had those off to the side, already packaged in tiny jewelry bags so they wouldn't get lost or tangled, and the one he was working on sitting in front of them

Derek stared at it for a long moment, gold glitter, a tan cord, it looked like the charms he was trying to hook were a gun and a star...

The Sheriff's....

He took a deep breath, feeling like crap for taking him away from this when it was clearly important....

He sat down slowly, grabbing the manicure tweasers Stiles used on the jump rings and then picking up one of the charms

He couldn't let Stiles ruin himself, but... that didn't mean he had to leave this undone....

He didn't know how to make jewelry but he had seen Stiles do it enough that he could atleast string a few charms on a cord, so he set to work on it, hoping that would put him at enough ease to sleep well should he wake up again before morning

For the last year Derek had been watching Stiles walk a tightrope, barely staying on and often times falling off

Stiles hadn't been in the same since the nogitsune and every moment since then had just been another stone added to the weight setting him on a spiraling decline

The last year had been healing, thankfully, he was finally getting some help even though most of it was self-taught and it seemed like the bad things were on a semi-permanent hiatus

For now, atleast

He was healing, and he had days where he was almost back to his old self

But then there were days like this where he was... not the same

Where he was cold and anxious and sore and couldn't settle and couldn't think and felt the walls caving in on him

Derek hated those days, because he could do nothing to help, he could only watch

After a year he was finally having more good days than bad

The first few months had been just bad days, bad, bad, _worse_

_But he started to get better, and there were still lasting effects_

_He was more cynical and untrusting of people he wasn't intimately close with than he had ever been and although he was generally more evened out with his moods whenever he did get mad his temper was as short as a candle wick, and the protectiveness..._

_Stiles was obsessively protective of everyone now, but no one more so than his father_

_That was part of the reason he had to move out, despite not going to college, neither of them could stand it anymore, it was just getting to be too much_

_Stiles didn't sleep_

_He obsessively called or dropped by the station when the sheriff wasn't home and when he was Stiles hovered like a mother hen, even when he went to bed Stiles often sat outside his door in a poor excuse of twilight sleep_

_And nothing the sheriff said or did made a lick of difference_

_They decided it would be best to have a little distance_

_Maybe if the sheriff wasn't always under Stiles' nose it would be harder for him to keep up with some of his obsessive behaviors (like sitting outside his door when he was sleeping for one) and that would, by extension, calm a little bit of his anxiety_

_Plus Derek provided a great much-needed distraction, because apparently there were all SORTS of things that he was doing wrong with his life that Stiles needed to monitor, adjust, or flat-out fix_

_Like actually having food in the house, for example, instead of just energy bars and milk_

_Derek didn't actually mind it, no one had hovered over him since Laura- hell no one had CARED since Laura- and it was... it was nice... having someone taking a little control and not allowing Derek to continue wrecking himself, because even though he had evolved, that didn't automatically mean that his problems went poof and he never had been good at taking care of himself to begin with_

_That overprotectiveness didn't fade, and now, staring at the necklace in his hands, he was starting to wonder just how much Stiles had been doing behind their backs to keep them safe_

_To give them that little extra boost that everyone was just too proud to admit that they needed_

_Derek swallowed, bagging up the necklace and finishing his hot chocolate before walking over to the couch and very carefully picking up the spark, holding him securely and starting to walk upstairs_

_"Daddy..." Stiles grumbled, eyebrows pinching in his sleep_

_"It's ok, he's ok Stiles, I promise," he said softly, leaning down and pausing_

_He hadn't...._

_He hadn't scented anyone since Laura..._

_He didn't know how Stiles would react but..._

_He swallowed, rubbing his nose against the juncture in his throat and inhaling_

_As if Stiles knew exactly what he was doing, he relaxed, looking more at peace and curling closer to Derek as the werewolf carried him to bed_

_~+~_

_"Kira!! How's monster making coming?"_

_It was both equally surprising and entirely unsurprising when Kira finally announced that she was going to be going into special effects work and went to school to get a degree in special effects make up_

_It wasn't anyone's first thought on what she would do but at the same time it seemed somehow completely in sync with her_

_"It's going ... alright, I have my mid-term tommorrow and it's probably going to kill me," the kitsune sighed back, offering the pair a soft smile_

_"Sorry about that, you sound like you need some special Stilinski cookies," Stiles grinned, handing her a bowl of homemade cookies_

_Kira gasped and bounced with joy, peeling the lid off and grabbing one eagerly_

_"Awwww you didn't have to do this!!"_

_"Oh I didn't do it for you, I made one for my dad so you get the rest of the batch," Stiles teased_

_Kira just laughed and thanked him, looking like the cookie had made her entire week_

_And if college was as bad as Derek had always heard it was, it just may have..._

_"So why'd you call us? I mean not that we aren't happy to come and visit you but... two hours in December traffic man, what gives?"_

_Kira suddenly looked crest-fallen, walking over to the bunk-bed behind her and sitting on the bottom bunk_

_"My neighbor has been acting kind of... strange lately,"_

_"Strange how?" Derek frowned_

_"Like ... 'I'm hiding pot in my room' strange or ... 'I grow fur and claws on the full moon' strange?" Stiles added_

_"Um... the second one... although what would 'I'm hiding pot in my room strange' even act like?"_

_"I plead the fifth," Stiles snorted, and Derek gave him a look of so much concern that Stiles wondered if it actually hurt his face to look like that_

_"SO you need Derek to take a sniff of the neighbor and tell us if she's going to be sprouting a tail next week or what?"_

_"Basically yeah, I know Scott is closer but his finals are killing him even worse than mine are..."_

_"We understand, besides we were going to be in the area anyway, we've gotta buy Christmas cards,"_

_Derek stared at him, tilting his head like a puppy_

_Sometimes he just really didn't understand Stiles' humor..._

_~+~_

_"So the neighbor is a born werewolf? How is she just coming into her powers now?"_

_"It isn't that uncommon, the cut off for developing your powers is age 25, she's nineteen so she's just a late bloomer,"_

_"Huh..." Stiles hummed, tapping on the steering weel as he drove_

_"How old were you when you got all wolfy?"_

_"Sixteen,"_

_"Were you early then or-"_

_"No just average, early is thirteen,"_

_"Ah..."_

_"I called Satomi, she has a pack member in the area that will watch over the girl over the next few moons, figure out what to do with her pack wise since she has no family left,"_

_"Yeah..." Stiles mumbled, turning into the parkinglot_

_He didn't want to say what they were both thinking, that if things didn't work out with Satomi Scott and Kira would naturally want to bring the girl into their pack_

_Nothing had really rubbed Stiles the wrong way about her, she seemed boringly normal, but still... the wounds from the last new pack member they let in were still fresh, he didn't know if he could take experiencing the newness of it all again so soon..._

_"So we really are going to get Christmas cards?"_

_Stiles inhaled, thankfull for Derek's distraction and giving a tight nod_

_"Yep, get ready for the REAL nightmare before Christmas Derek, finding good Christmas cards is about as easy as finding good jewelry at a drug store,"_

_"Have alot of experience with that do you?" Derek teased_

_"Ha ha ha," Stiles snorted, turning the engine off and grumbling as he got out of the car_

_"Just hurry up before the wind freezes my nose off,"_

_"We certainly wouldn't want that," Derek teased, but followed him out of the car anyway_

_Stiles seemed to be feeling better, thankfully_

_Derek had found out earlier that morning that Stiles had skipped his anxiety medicine yesterday and that probably accounted for alot of what happened to him last night, but it was still good to see Stiles back in a good emotional place and Derek would do just about anything to keep him there_

_His anxiety medication - wich really was questionable as a "medication" considering it was completely holistic and, in Derek's opinion, a good trade from the Adarall he had stopped taking several months ago, it had done well by him, unlocking his magic had cleared up most of the need for the Adarall and his overwelming anxiety would have called for a change in medication anyway as it far over-rode the ADHD he had had before his powers came to fruition- did wonders for him but it didn't do everything, and sometimes getting him to remember to take it was a pain in the neck_

_But Derek was more than willing to help him remember_

_Derek was more than willing to do just about anything when it came to Stiles_

_~+~_

_"Oh my God these are such CRAP!" Stiles groaned, dragging a hand down his face and shaking his head in frustration_

_"They aren't THAT bad," Derek sighed_

_"Der, I just picked up a card that had Santa's bare butt on it,"_

_Derek cringed_

_Yeah that.. that wasn't good..._

_"It's either crude and boring or sappy and plain, there is no in between, there's no originality, I hate all of these things,"_

_"Why don't we just get a box of generic cards then?"_

_Stiles made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and grimaced_

_"No way... I have a record of being the best card giver ever ok? Scott and I have a yearly competition and I am NOT backing out,"_

_"Then what's your solution?"_

_"I don't know! I mean why can't we just have cards like.... like.... 'Only three more shopping days before your loved ones find out how little you understand them' or something like that?"_

_Derek couldn't help himself, despite biting his lip he actually started laughing- Derek Hale, LAUGHING, at one of STILES' jokes_

_"That's actually pretty good,"_

_"Or 'You'll always be on the nice list as long as your heart is innocent and pure- so basically you're screwed',"_

_Derek looked down, starting to chuckle again and shaking his head_

_"Or like ... a raptor with a Santa hat on the cover that says 'This pleases me' and then when you open it it says something like 'My freind promised me Christmas dinner, nice to see you'?"_

_Derek leaned against one of the shelves, his laughs getting a little louder_

_"Those are actually good! Why don't we just get a bunch of blank cards and you write the funny stuff on the inside?"_

_"Huh.... you know that actually isn't a terrible idea..."_

_"Gee thanks," Derek snorted_

_"It's just too bad we're so limited on the exterior designs, like we probably WON'T find that raptor,"_

_"Yeah but trust me, printing cards is a pain like nothing else, be glad you aren't doing it,"_

_"You have experience with that?"_

_"Some, I tried printing templates when I was a kid and drawing the designs on myself," he shrugged_

_"You DRAW?"_

_"A little? Trust me, it's nothing spectacular, just... they're not great, trust me,"_

_Stiles stared at him, a terrible, menacing grin starting to cross his face_

_At roughly the same time, Derek started turning pale_

_"Stiles no-!"_

_"STILES YES!!!"_


End file.
